LGISD Board Votes for Tax Break for a Green Hydrogen Plant That is Being Considered Here

The La Grange ISD Board of Trustees held their monhtly meeting Monday. Here’s a roundup:

Administrative Reports

Superintendent Andy McHazlett reported that the current enrollment is 1,876 which is up 13-14 students from last year at this time. The ADA (average daily attendance) is 1,748 or 94.78% of the total enrollment. This is lower than it has been due to a flu outbreak in the district.

Assistant Superintendent Stacy Eilers told the board that the Veterans’ Day Program was a tremendous success. It was well attended and many of the Veterans in attendance were very happy that the school took the time to honor them.

Director of Operations Sharon Muzny reported that the high school/middle school cafeteria roof repair will take place over the Thanksgiving break.

Public Hearing

A public hearing was held to receive the public’s input on the possible designation of a reinvestment zone related to Chapter 313 appraised value limitation application from Monarch Energy Development, LLC’s plan for a potential green hydrogen plant in La Grange.

A question posed from the public “There is a tax rebatement for reduction of some sort to Monarch, and the funds are made up by some government entity. Is that the federal government or the state government, or both?”

Mr. McHazlett responded with the following, “So a 313 agreement basically allows the school district to go into a partnership with the company and for a period of usually between 10-15 years, there’s a (consideration) of about half of what their taxes are going to be, and that’s what they are responsible for. The way school’s get funded, is we collect tax payer money and we get state aid. The school system TEA (Texas Education Agency), says that you can only have so much money per student – anything over that goes back to other school districts. Let’s use the number $6,000, if the taxes we collect equals $6,000, then we get no state aid, but we don’t do that. We don’t collect that amount of money. So, say we only collect $4,000 (per student) with our taxes, then state aid gives us an extra $2,000 and than gets us to our $6,000. The only way that number ever goes up is if our enrollment goes up.”

This agreement does two things:

• It allows the company to come in with a reduced tax amount for that period of time, and

• It allows the school to receive 50% of the taxes. In this case the district would receive $4-5 million from Monarch. That amount of money would not count toward the $6,000 per student, but would go into the general fund.

Without this agreement, the company could come in on their own and the tax base would go up, and the state aid would go down.

After a lengthy discussion in closed session with the school’s attorney, Mark Goulet, the board came out of closed session and adopted the criteria and guidelines for creating a reinvestment zone and a resolution designating the Monarch Energy Development, LLC Reinvestment Zone. In the resolution it states “That the Monarch Energy Development, LLC Reinvestment Zone shall take immediate effect upon adoption by the Board of Trustees and shall remain designated as a commercial-industrial reinvestment zone for a period of five (5) years from such date of such designation.”

New Hires and Resignations

Melissa McCullough was hired as the receptionist at the high school. Resignations were received from the following: Whitney Smith – 6th grade teacher, Arcenia Cueller-K-6 cafeteria worker, Minerva Sanchez-K-6 cafeteria manager, James Ellis-transportation custodian, Yeli Cerda-ESL intervention support para, Carolyn Dahse-bus driver.